UA’s Sonic Frontiers series presents avant-folk music

Thursday

Mar 7, 2013 at 12:01 AM

The University of Alabama’s Sonic Frontiers concert series will present a double bill of Appalachian-inspired avant-folk music and improvised drumming at 7:30 tonight in the Greensboro Room of the Bama Theatre, 600 Greensboro Ave.

By Lee Shook Jr.Special to The Tuscaloosa News

The University of Alabama’s Sonic Frontiers concert series will present a double bill of Appalachian-inspired avant-folk music and improvised drumming at 7:30 tonight in the Greensboro Room of the Bama Theatre, 600 Greensboro Ave.The concert will feature the composer, banjoist and UA instructor Holland Hopson and percussionist Justin Peake.Hopson started his career as a classically trained saxophonist with a penchant for free jazz. He will perform selections from his album “Post & Beam,” which features banjo and computer-based electronics along with performances of traditional Appalachian standards and his compositions. Peake, a Tuscaloosa native who lives in New Orleans, will perform composed and improvised music that will explore “new territory in jazz and dance musics” for solo drums. For those who have never attended the series, the show will serve as an introduction to a new generation’s take on what are considered to be more traditional strains of American music.“I view the computer as the folk instrument of our moment,” Hopson said. He believes folk music is still thriving in the modern age, but in ways most don’t immediately recognize. He frames the idea of “folk” as being of its time and made with the instruments, no matter how advanced, of the day, be they African hand drums, mandolins, turntables or computers.“For me, if we think about an instrument that people use — not just professionals — I want to include the computer in that,” he said. “And so, in a way, I’m standing up with this antique — this kind of relic — and with the actual folk instrument. And people’s perception is usually the absolute reverse. They’re like, ‘Look at that brand-new technology that is so foreign to us and this folk instrument.’ And for me I see it the other way around. It’s like ‘Look at this antique instrument that is so strange to me — but I love — and this folk instrument that everybody checks their email with.’”Combining a series of pressure, motion and distance sensors that have been retrofitted onto his banjo, Hopson triggers sound manipulating programming language embedded in a computer interface that allows him to process the music on the banjo in real time, and provide sonic textures that add an often surreal and expansive ambience to his more traditional clawhammer style of playing.Peake, who is also a producer, DJ, sound designer and visual artist, will offer a counterpart to Hopson’s new traditionalism through his fractured beat-making and free-form drumming style. Both artists will also do a quick question-and-answer session after the show.The final concert of this year’s Sonic Frontiers series be April 8 at Manderson Landing with an outdoor sunset performance of New York City-based composer Aaron Siegel’s “Science is Only a Sometimes Friend” by the UA Percussion Ensemble, led by Tim Feeney.